Please take a moment and make a financial contribution to TheFunded. If we have helped you, help us with resources to further grow the both the site and our entrepreneur training program, The Founder Institute.

I can't say enough good things about TTV's team. Smart, warm, full of ideas, and advice. Helpful. And our many interactions with them bore fruit. They issued us a term sheet. But was it? TTV promised to fund only a small part of their own term sheet. Now that I understand what happened here, I can tell you that what they really issued to us a "hunting licenses," not a term sheet. I've since learned that this is common practice amount smaller VCs. The onus of syndicating falls on the company, not on them. This helps them confirm their funding decision through the decisions of institutional investor colleagues. Well, that might suit them but it was hell on us. It was hard enough to get one VC to say yes -- a six month process. Getting two or three more to join on to a syndication and say yes in the 60 day period TTV gave us was just impossible. And so as quickly as the term sheet materialized, TTV retracted it. TTV's decision to pull the rug out from under us almost destroyed our company. Our investors saw the TTV deal implosion as a bad sign. Internal investors who were about to write checks didn't. And it soured most of the current crop of prospective investors who were circling and watching the TTV deal. I hope my fellow entrepreneurs can learn from this lesson. If you are considering a smaller VC like TTV, make sure you are clear about your expectations from the start. If you are expecting them to handle syndication, don't. If I could start all over again, I would not have even approached TTV. It was a monumental waste of time for us. In the order of hundreds of hours and legal and travel expenses in the neighborhood of $20,000 or more.

Posted by
hsfx117
on 2009-07-01

PUBLIC:

We approached a number of VC's in different locations for our financial technology pitch. Most were located in New York and Boston with a couple in California. While we may have found some of the north east folks a bit more knowledgeable in our particular area of fin tech, the TTV folks were bright and did their research. That said, and perhaps this is due to the fact that they are based in Atlanta, the standout characteristic of the firm was their lack of arrogance and the fact that, whether we agreed or disagreed, they were a pleasure do deal with. The one lesson I have learned during this process, is you will almost never get everything you want, I will say in this case, we still closed a deal that we were comfortable and satisfied with.

Posted by
Anon
on 2008-05-21

PUBLIC:

Originally thought that TTV would not be a good fit for my firm given their LP ties (Synovus and CheckFree) but after pitching them realized they are not tied to them for exit or operational strategies. If you have any type of finserv orientation in your solution you should approach them as they see and hear a lot of deals in that market and can provide a lot of feedback and validation. They tend to be spread thin so you'll have to persist to get into them so find a trusted source for a referal to break through the noise and get attention.